Right now, Wall Street market makers (aka market manipulators) are promoting hope instead of fear (because they also know the AI bubble is eventually going to start its deflation leading to that fear driven market — thus the need to find reasons to pump the market up and sell high to suckers who buy into this rally).

In pushing the market to even higher levels though, all that does is provide this ongoing permission structure of market manipulation at the expense of actual market visibility (which has been FUBAR with the “liberation day” tariffs since 2025). The ones who get hurt in the end are of course the regular people (retirement accounts, IRA’s, 401k’s, etc) and/or the ones foolish enough to invest in this market by purchasing into the highs while the smart money is dumping their positions in order to lock in actual profits (classic pump and dump).

I’ve remained transparent about my sell orders with AAPL (my largest holdings). The only thing I’m doing is constantly increasing the quantity in those orders (aka decreasing the amounts I am willing to hold) based on ongoing factors/current events. And I’m also hedging into gold since I expect the purchasing power of the USD to be eroded/devalued significantly as the United States becomes isolated by its actions. Again, the disclaimer applies.

I have no crystal ball on this market though and would like to be 100% wrong on this.

I write “only” because that is based on just the recent sell-off in various crypto issues that are sold in the equity markets. The dot.com bubble was similarly built on very highly leveraged positions which deflated in a chain reaction when margin calls hit those automatic triggers. Back then, algorithmic trading (high frequency trading) was in its infancy; now, a lot of market moves are no longer based on fundamentals because computerized trading just moves the market and generates trading profits out of those moves for the biggest traders. Wall Streets cottage industry of analysts (and people employed to run these financial “news” sites) are just there for this rollercoaster ride.

The reason why I link often to Yahoo Finance is that it’s no longer a monolithic entity. It has long transformed into a financial news aggregator of articles, news, and reports from a variety of sources where it is easy to see the dichotomy and contradictions with the ones doing the hyping (pump & dump) versus the ones trying to report the reality.

The dot.com bubble is that smaller peak back in 1999-2000. The NASDAQ composite itself has most of these tech companies where the current AI and crypto bubble exists where the entire reality of actual fundamentals no longer exists when taking into account these global tariffs that are being unilaterally (and often times unlawful) pushed by that orange colored criminal running the US. This recent selloff is miniscule when considering it is only slightly off its recent all-time high of 24,019.99 (the percentage difference is what matters).

And now, you have analysts and business leaders alike (including one of the beneficiaries of this AI bubble, Jensen Huang of NVIDIA), saying there is nothing to see here; that it’s not an AI bubble. And let me tell you, this is like snake oil salesman BS with selling hype to the next “greater fool” that decides to “buy those shares of the smart money that is selling to lock in their profits”; especially when you start unpacking the highly leveraged positions that could create that scenario where the automatic circuit breakers kick in on a broader market sell off. This recent $1 Billion sell off is a blip when you consider the trillions in market capitalization that is built on these highly leveraged positions.

Bitcoin (one of the decentralized currencies that was meant to work outside of the reach of governments/their respective central banks), hasn’t really fulfilled its key role as that replacement decentralized currency. Anyone should know that when fiat currencies like the USD, JPY, EURO, etc are still what is being used globally for transactions. We were supposed to be able to use digital currencies like BTC to pay for all of our goods and services by now (based on all of the hype that was propagated a decade ago). The start of this current bubble began around a decade ago; see how this cycle of pump and dump works (more so now when computerized trading algorithms are driving the speed of this in conjunction with social media algorithms that have many shooting first, and asking the difficult questions later (or never at all).

Today, Bitcoin is not used for most any B2B and consumer transactions (it is arbitraged against a fiat currency like the USD as an example). What it mainly represents is a digital token that you hope you can find someone to pay you more for it than you did (aka “the greater fool” theory). It’s a digital version that isn’t any better than existing fiat currencies which its promoters (mostly these dumb folks that made huge sums of money early on, trying very hard to convince everyone else that this is real and as being better. Just as global fiat currencies are no longer backed by a physical asset like gold (instead, they are based on those countries GDP and therefore backed by the governments promise; though we know how that also goes when criminal politicians end up in positions of power where they end up finding ways to pillage and loot those coffers to enrich themselves), these digital currencies have nothing backing them and are virtually unregulated (but you have tech bros and other unsavory characters pumping them up to be this great thing).

The irony in all of this is also staring people right in the face; an issue like BTC is reflected in USD in the equity markets (purchased and redeemed with that USD currency which the crypto folks constantly want to eliminate with all other government fiat currencies). It’s comical how much pretzel twisting is involved when it comes to the logic behind this scam (and part of this was broken down when one of the things being used for blockchain technology was the promotion of digital artwork via NFT’s where the gaming industry was trying to jump on that bandwagon (but here were are a few years later with all of the hype about that blowing up into pieces as expected). Sure, the first movers made a ton of money (it’s how these scams work) but the suckers who came after, were the ones left holding an empty sack of nothing but false promises. And here we are again with a convergence of two overhyped industries and a far larger bubble that some (like Huang) are saying it is not (he has a self-interest in all of this of course).

Back in 1999-2000, the bubble bursting was a day of panic selling and margin calls (with the likes of CNBC adding fuel to that fire by how their hosts were covering it). It looked and felt like doomsday. What looked like a gigantic peak on the chart back then pales in comparison to this current one which began its ascendancy a decade ago. I’ve personally divested out of most of my long term positions and have only Apple (AAPL), Broadcom (AVGO), and IBM as my largest remaining positions (and the former, I’m already beginning to execute that planned divestment strategy). As I wrote in that posting, I have no idea if $300/share will be reached by the end of this year for that initial group of sales (but it’s one of the few bucking the current sell off because it is no surprising capital inflow will go into it based on their recent earnings).

As for those stories about an incoming reset being done to people’s money? Well, these often times hucksters pushing crypto and AI as the future, don’t have most peoples actual interests on their radar (because they want unregulated crypto to supplant the usual monetary systems so that they can do their criminal activity without any accountability). And it is no secret these folks want the USD devalued in order to create that instability, where these shady folks can promote digital currencies as THE REPLACEMENT (the ones who have long had positions staked out/their hands deep in the pot such that they will be the beneficiaries of such a move).

The biggest problem is actually trying to decouple global systems from existing currencies because of the chaos it would cause economically. Remember, these peoples wealth are also tied to things like the USD. Global equity markets are tied to their nations currency. But this is what happens when idiots have a bag of gold dropped on their head (by their lucky bets) and then try to use their wealth and influence that came with that, to push their often times bad takes on everyone else. Again, it is almost hilarious how these folks are willing to shoot themselves in the foot just to be able to have it all.

AI/ML are tools that should be utilized where it makes most sense in assisting people with their tasks versus this toxic notion of replacing human workers the way so many companies are trying to do (because it reduces those personnel related expenses/helps senior management/executives justify their bonuses). As for the public, many are using ChatGPT at unhealthy levels to replace their actual critical thinking skills (society is going to be dumbed down dramatically a decade from now if this trend does not stop). But then again, we’re already living in a global idiocracy.

This report from MIT is also unsurprising where “95 percent of enterprise organizations report zero measurable gains from the adoption of generative AI tools.” But you see, the tech bros (who were hyping this up) AND Wall Street (who have been pumping this while the smart money is dumping it on those who prefer “buying high and are left holding the bag” when the bubble pops), don’t want the general public to know this.

And here is one to file in the “lack of self-awareness” file. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman basically agreeing that investors are “overexcited” (aka bubble territory) about AI and saying out loud that someone will lose a lot of money”. This is while he is seeking a $500 billion valuation in a secondary offering. Translation: Altman believes the market of investors will have enough that are dumb enough to buy at the top and be left hanging there. Yes, that is what these folks (they live and operate in a different reality) think of the rest of the population; more than enough suckers to buy into the shit they are shoveling out.

How many big tech firms have been burning through capital to build out these data centers (that are sucking up energy/requiring massive amounts of cooling/water that not even solar can complete power; thus requiring them to tap into the power grid). Then look at the delusional pricing structure many of these companies are trying to charge users with to create their slop. The level of cognitive dissonance that one can read in the financial press regarding AI is staggering (worse than the height of the dot com bubble when analysts were trying to justify stuff like Pets.com); generally speaking, the media barely covers these types of impacts and the effects it has on those communities where these data centers are located.

How many old big tech companies ended up being “rebranded” as AI companies over the past few years trying to ride this over hyped pig up to the top of the mountain? I give IBM a pass because they’ve been researching this stuff since the 1950’s (though under its older name like neural networking); ironically, they haven’t actually benefited from this bubble as much as the likes of Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia to name a few.

I will give Garman credit for calling out the BS unlike Microsoft that has been laying off people amidst record revenues/profits and proclaiming some of that is because of savings from AI, or companies like Duolingo whose CEO made it clear their intention to replace as many personnel with AI if it can perform those tasks.

In the mean time, folks like myself are doing this:

Whenever this AI bubble blows up, many of us are going to be here saying “told you so”.

As someone who was part of that bubble (working for Sun Microsystems during that period) and later taking part in the market just prior to it popping and crashing big time (while at Apple), my often times cracked crystal ball is also telegraphing that it is a similar massive bubble (where history has a pretty good chance of repeating itself because we as a species, have this stronger tendency to forget the past/keep making the same mistakes over time). I documented only a tiny fraction of that (the gory details of the day trading parts could fill a book and I have zero interest in going down that rabbit hole).

Tulip mania was one of the most well known bubbles. Charles Mackay’s book “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” is a recommended read overall in terms of manias in general (the chapters with how these bubbles form in markets is also good) as to this psychology that impacts humans. Modern days folks have diagrammed this as follows.

The “smart money” refers to a phrase regarding those folks who understand the market dynamics; in short, decision making not based on hype or fear in order to buy low and sell high (that doesn’t mean the absolute bottom nor the absolute top; if one happens to accomplish both, it is normally out of coincidence/luck). Everyone else however gets caught in the emotional element (irrational exuberance or fear); they end up getting the “news” when it is on that uphill climb when those in the know (especially market insiders) start the “pump and dump” routine (to get the rest of the masses hyped up in order to buy the shares that the smart money folks want to sell in order to get out with their gains largely intact while not caring about the remaining percentage gains at the top which is only known in hindsight once everything comes crashing down). Remember, markets exist because there are buyers and sellers (with a price matching component). In the past, that used to be handled by floor traders (market makers); nowadays, this is handled by computerized trading (including high frequency trading algorithms that are able to move the markets up/down quickly).

In the chart (at the top of the page) of the Nasdaq Composite Index, the Dot-com bubble looks like a tiny blip now (that peak in 2000). In 2018, analysts still did not believe another bubble was forming. But as this graph shows, the tech heavy Nasdaq has been on this uphill run with the current one being fueled by AI and crypto. Guess where the smart money folks bought into the current market? Yes, somewhere back in the prior decade.

Quite a bit of the analyst research (which can be viewed daily in an aggregated fashion on financial “news” sites like Yahoo Finance) reads consistently like the “pump and dump” of old (well, that is actually a very core part of Wall Street in general once you understand the mechanics and mentality of that industry; again, Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis is a good read since it highlights the typical sociopathetic behavior that is common in that industry). IMHO, I think the market coverage is significantly worse in recent years because it is treated even more like a spectator sport now when taken together with how this corrupt/self-dealing kakistocracy in the U.S. is handling things. You can insure they will protect themselves/their interests first; the ones who will be holding the bag will be the ones who get sucked into the tail end of this bubble.

Microsoft (which I recently divested from for other larger reasons though this bubble was part of that decision) has been on a tear recently because of it’s own AI push (and it being pumped by Wall Street analysts along with Nvidia). My last large accumulation of MSFT was in 2015 (the previous ones were all from early 2000’s before the dot-com crash). I’m no genius when it comes to the market. I just understand what the stock market is really all about, learned valuable lessons by experiencing (not by choice) previous market “crashes”, and view a lot of these analyst reports with high doses of skepticism (being a contrarian/devils advocate is really a good trait to have when investing). When you see articles pushing these two companies at these levels, that are just some of the small signs to begin exiting (because the “smart” money always tends to get out while the stock is being pumped by these analyst types).

I fully acknowledge that MSFT could hit further all-time highs (I personally don’t care given the main reasons why I decided to exit those holdings; it was no different with Facebook where I sold that at $230/share and it is now trading at over $700/share — for myself and this is a “me” thing, there’s a point where those gains are “dirty” money given how they are making their money). But like everything else in life, time will tell if this is a bigger bubble (and if it will pop with the same intensity as the Dot-com one).

I love living in the era of the business idiot. Multiple 3 trillion market cap companies forcing software down people’s throats that they hate that has grown a near-cultural level of ridicule about its propensity for errors, all because they forgot how to do anything but chase quarterly growth

— Ed Zitron (@edzitron.com) May 7, 2025 at 7:15 PM

A good portion of my old blog (merged into this one) from 2011-2023 encapsulates this modern era of the “business idiots” who are now in charge of these large cap companies (with the tech ones leading that pack).  The “Peter Principle” is even more applicable with the current crop of senior management, executives and CEO’s running these companies.  Many of them are the definition of INCOMPETENCE rising to the top.  What many are good at is word salad bullshitism that gets shoveled out as corporate press releases and having this parabolic shield in front of them (where anything critical or reasonable, is deflected/reflected away from them).  I know it is not all, but it’s a greater majority making it simpler to generalize.

But yes, the highly enshittified software that gets flooded out in their often times half-baked poorly tested state in the chase of that need for ever increasing revenues and profits (quarterly, yearly, and year over year) because of what Wall Street demands, is the definition of late stage capitalism that is about to go through some things.

This whole “AI” push exemplifies this; another pump and dump bubble that will end up like all prior bubbles, bursting with a group of suckers holding the bag. Many of the tech broligarchy got lucky (they are far from genius visionaries and should NEVER be put on a pedestal). But our societies have that obsession and give too many of these folks far too much credit (look at how many thought Elon Musk was one of these really smart people versus what many of us knew from before; that he bought his way to those companies and took credit for much of the hard work by the original founders/engineers). But I digress.

If I let emotion determine my portfolios, I’d just sell and divest myself of everything/wash my hands of the whole thing. But the rational part of me says I need to execute previously planned exit strategies in that more orderly fashion (it took me a bit of time for example to finally divest from Facebook). Plus I need to be mindful of my personal income stream (which is from dividend income since I do not expect social security to be a thing once I am eligible; I need to make my money work for me for a few more years especially now with this self-inflicted economic disruption with the tariffs by this kakistocracy regime in the U.S. which is going to increase inflation along with the high likelihood that the USD will be significantly devalued).

History has been fairly consistent where “what goes up, has to come down”, and the “bigger they are, the harder they fall”. The fall of the U.S. empire is just another casualty in this with an extensively broken system of politics and institutions that IMHO, needs to trashed (because I feel it is beyond fixing when much of it is owned by these “business idiots” who have bought the entirety of it via lobbying and corporate dark money).

From 13 years ago, and still applicable today because we have sociopaths running the U.S. right now.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wall-street-epic-comeback-unsolved-203123157.html

What it is not is an “epic” comeback nor is it an “unsolved market mystery” when this BS has happened before (or do we want to conveniently forget about history as we humans always tend to do) . It’s just short term market volatility which presents these trading opportunities (played long, short, and via the options market) meant for the big players. Back in 2011, I wrote this long winded opinionated rant (where good portions of it are still relevant in 2025). The second-to-the-last paragraph is a short summation of the current market dynamic where the financial “news” media is presenting it in this “epic” comeback manner when in reality, all of this volatility has not been put through the usual technicals which the market always ends up being subjected to. Translation, it’s the usual shenanigans of “pumping and dumping”, and repeating that cycle.

Market action again is now driven by computerized algorithms (high frequency trading) which had made Wall Street even more of a rigged game that those with huge amounts of capital, can generate large sums of wealth via that market volatility. These have been juiced up in recent years by machine learning (what others call artificial “intelligence”) where it can make those decisions (what is good or bad news) even quicker than before. People wonder why I am not enamored with all of this AI propaganda being perpetrated by the tech broligarchs.

Again, I am not against ethical uses of machine learning algorithms. But the bulk of it is based on ulterior motives (to feed people propaganda, to extract as much personal information from you without any regard for your personal rights and privacy), and utilizing a lot of outright intellectual property theft. Going on a short tangent, OpenAI wants to freakin monetize the crap out of ChatGPT (garbage in garbage out technology) while failing to get permission or even compensating people for all of the gratuitous model training they’ve done on copyrighted information (I have a problem with the corporate hypocrisy of “do as I say, not as I do” because it is pure unadulterated bullshit).

I’m pretty much in the Miyazaki Hayao camp (what he mentioned years ago in 2016 about the tech) let alone if OpenAI trained their models against Studio Ghibli art (and if so, “if” they got the proper permissions and licensing – we know the realistic answers to this). While this “Ghiblification” is fun, AI generated work is far from the “imitation is a form of flattery” argument especially if those models were trained from actual Ghibli artwork (and without the proper permissions and licensing per copyright law). Again, there is a monetization aspect to it (since the free version limits the amount of image generation per day; which can be gotten around with a paid version). I will call it what it is; IP theft (and thus want no part of it). Meta and Google do the exact same thing (this is why I made it a priority to reduce my footprint with Google properties and transitioning off of Blogger). And we are not even talking about the huge amounts of energy that has been consumed in the process. But I digress…

Again, this short TED Talk is required viewing. In the case of Wall Street, computerized (high frequency) trading algorithms have long preceded these other uses in order to generate obsene sums of wealth for those that have a lot of zeroes following the first number in their investment accounts.

Simply put, this is classic “pump and dump” taking place under the guise of these off and on tariff announcements (except China which came back last night with an 84% retalitory tariff which the Felon retaliated with a 125% tariff).  HFT algorithms again can move the market rapidly in a “shoot first, and deal with the actual fundamentals later” fashion.

I also previously mentioned the likes of Ackman and Musk criticizing the tariffs (chalking part of that up to being performative signaling (like to send a signal to those who knew from the inside what was going to happen, to cover short positions and take up long positions to ride the market back up).  When the futures were green or barely in the red pre-market today, it didn’t seem right considering the bond market reaction (where some country was dumping them versus the usual “flight to quality” response that occurs during periods of uncertainty with the stock market).

The U.S. was staring down a self-imposed catastrophic trifecta (tanking stock market, tanking bond market, and a weakening USD) as a result of the way this tariff tradewar has been rolled out.  The dumping of U.S. treasuries is telling; the U.S. (under this regime and for the foreseeable future) is unreliable and untrustworthy.  That damage is going to be long term.  The tanking of treasuries also has the potential to have the USD depreciated as the world reserve currency (which as noted before, is a high level objective of the PayPal mafia – Musk, Sacks,  and Thiel).

These haphazardly applied tariffs aren’t going to do the global economy any good either (the U.S. economy will be one of the biggest losers though because all of this is signaling “do not trust the U.S.”) until other countries (excluding the U.S.) can negotiate new trade agreements with each other.  The convicted felon is simply going to keep playing this game (off and on tariff threats and try to get trade partners to call/meet to negotiate) in order to control that narrative (like what he did today).  Basically, the wheels are in motion to accomplish these objectives and the media (including the financial ones), are NOT reporting it this way (just as they aren’t pushing this entire thing as a hostile dismantling to the U.S. government and existing economic order).

Unsurprising after the tariff pause was announced, Ackman lavished praise on the felon (the pause being “executed perfectly”) for putting out the fire (one that he started by lighting a fire, burning the house, and having a partially burned house – the house is still heavily damaged as a result you clown).  Yeah right.  The prior days sell off (shorting) and todays rally from the tariff pause, has the hallmarks of the market being manipulated (shorts being able to cover and pick up equities for a short term trading play).  Take a look at Apple.  Even with the added tariffs to China (exempted from this pause), it rallied.  The market technicals are all over the place right now (make no mistakes, lows and support levels from this recent volatility will need to be re-tested).

This 90 day pause (if it sticks), is going to be a 90 day period of trading.  Then the process gets repeated again if agreements aren’t negotiated by then (and the felon wants other countries to be making calls and/or having meetings because it feeds the performative narrative that he is striking deals).  World leaders are just being played at this point versus having the guts to say “enough is enough”, and ostracisizing this U.S. regime.  Because they would have the upper hand in the end by deeply damaging the U.S. ability to have any leverage.

In this environment, caveat emptor.  The buying opportunities presented aren’t long term viable right now because there is a bubble (AI) and this recent tariff induced sell off was no where close to capitulation (and then all of the technical aspects with re-testing lows, re-testing support levels/moving averages, and then consolidation).  My last “stink bid” change looks very wrong now (because of this pause), but I am going to leave it in place.  What this current market environment is good for is trading it both ways including the options market if you have the time to watch it/keep track of the news as close as possible.

All of this is because of the idiot felon (and every single one of his enablers) that is in control of the U.S., weaponizing tariffs (this is willful destruction of economies taking place).  The Republican controlled U.S. Congress could deal with this (since it is they who have control of tariffs), but that same Republican party is also complicit with allowing this to happen (willfully giving up their power).

This therefore isn’t fixing anything.  All it is setting things up for is allowing the ultra rich to restock their portfolios again once the bottom really falls out.  The ones who try to catch the falling knife now, are going to have buy often on the way down (expect markets to drop further because the washout of positions hasn’t even started yet where regular investors portfolios will be decimated).

Again, when I see 20-30% drops on the main indexes, that is when I know we are hitting that heavily negative sentiment.  Plus I need to see the air come out of the AI play (that is like dot com bubble 2.0) since you have these folks trying to pump it so that they can dump it.

UPDATE: These reports about Ackman and Musk criticizing these tariffs; part of it is performative IMHO in terms of sending out signals to their ultra-rich associates on when to get back in the market in order to short term trade the volatility (and/or to cover short positions).

That $2.7 TRILLION market rally (from a rumor posted on Twitter about a pause in the tariffs) and sent drop once it was proven to be false, exemplifies how the HFT (high frequency trading) algorithm can whipsaw the volality of the market for short term trades of large amounts of capital (where even small percentage moves can yield significant profits) in a very compressed timeframe.

This tariff talk is being weaponized to provide these short term trading opportunites.  What I haven’t seen yet is the actual capitulation and “wash out”.  Then the entire consolidation process, re-testing support levels, etc.  All we’ve had was 3 straight down days but with April 7th, recovering some ground after that rumor.

With that said, futures are up pre-market for April 8th while Asia and Europe are trading in the green because of talks that the U.S. will be having these tariff “discussions”.  Yes, they are seriously falling for this ploy of trying to kiss the orange felons ass versus telling the U.S. regime to take a hike.  He wants this in play and world leaders who aren’t pulling a Canada or China, are going to look weak in the process.  These countries should be looking to cut the U.S. out of the global trade (weakening it in the process), and looking to increase it with everyone else.